A Drop in Water
by Minty-Nutmeg
Summary: The world had grown all the more harsh and cruel in the time Rick had been forced into absence from it. People were devolving, deforming, destroying one another. There was no hope left for anyone. Yet, sometimes the unexpected happens, and the ripples of it have consequences untold. After all: the right person in the wrong time can make all the difference in the world. RickxOC.
1. Chapter 1: Expect the Unexpected

_Hey, everybody! Welcome to my fic. I'll keep it short - I'd just like to give a warm 'welcome!' to all readers, new and returning. I noticed the relative lack of RickxOC fics on the site, and was struck - Rick is such a lovely, interesting character. I had always liked him, and wanted to write a story with him - and then, late last night as I sat in my bed, I was suddenly struck with inspiration. I couldn't help but type a little story setter up! I hope you all enjoy. _  
_So far I'm thinking that this will probably just be a lovely little side project for me to work on in between my other TWD fics, unless the response is good. Let me know what you think, as always, and I hope you enjoy!  
_

_Anyway, that's enough - let's get this show on the road, everybody!  
_

_**DISCLAIMER: Me no own-y! ;A;**  
_

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Chapter 1 - Expect the Unexpected

Sweat dripping from his brow, blood seeping slowly into his shirt, Rick stared silently at the unmoving corpse on the side of the road.

All throughout the day, the sun had been beating down harshly, baking him within the stuffy police car he and Shane used for patrols, indefinitely borrowed from the station in what he dubbed a rather worthy use of government property. It had been hard to pry the spare keys from the ring on Officer Lebowitz' pedantically spotless leather belt, even if he had never really liked the steadfastly obnoxious man – and even harder to stop himself from gagging and retching up the pitiful little lunch he had just had when he opened the car he and Shane always used, only to find that Shane had left what looked like half a burger in the backseat which had now effectively reduced the air within to little more than a noxious bomb of cloying, choking nausea.

Swiftly turning away to a patiently awaiting Morgan, he had unsuccessfully tried to ignore the fact that he would be spending the next day or so in the awful stench, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Duane as the young boy's nose scrunched up and his throat gagged harshly, forcing him away from the vehicle as his steadfast father remained where he was, smile straining slightly as the wind carried the putrid heart-attack on a bun over to him. The odour had become all the more unbearable as the day dragged on, even though he had thrown the burger away as soon as he was on the highway, unable to bear it any longer – an altogether revolting combination of its remains and the blinding bolts of the unsympathetic sun making his head swim, furrowing his brow and thinning his mouth against the assault. Throw in the permeating, inescapable stench of the dead outside, and the tense, horrifying quest for his family became all the more excruciating.

Which brings us back to the fly-smothered body outside.

Seeing the flickering, feeble little arrow of the gas meter start to slump downwards – Shane had forgotten to fill the tank _again_ – Rick had cursed through his gritted teeth, a hand coming up to press against his stressed forehead as he let up on the gas pedal, sighing tiredly to himself. Night-time was swiftly approaching at that point, creeping up on the horizon, hitching up his shoulders and tensing his muscles, nagging him with the questions of where he would sleep, would he set camp, find more supplies, how much longer until Atlanta, so on and so forth. He wanted to push on, ignore his growing thirst and rumbling stomach – the small canteen of lukewarm water Morgan had given him quickly depleted in the long hours of driving, the little cans of soggy, unidentifiable meat clattering in the backseat unlikely to give him more than a day or two of nourishment at most. However, despite his adamant desire to continue, his quickly depleting gas and lurking exhaustion – how could someone who had just woken up from a coma be so tired? – were fast becoming an issue. So, to solve at least one issue, he had dug out his coffee-stained, Cynthiana Police Department regulation map of America and searched for the nearest township and its off-shooting gas station.

Juttering to a slow stop, eyes carefully glancing over the area around the small station he had found, he was struck by the mass of utterly still, silent cars. With a convoy of vehicles that size, you would expect at least a few people to be wandering about, but there were none. Alarm growing, instincts niggling and scraping at the back of his mind, he then spotted the half-eaten corpse on the side of the road, a small trio of crows picking conspicuously ignoring picking at it in favour of snapping at a basket of rotten corn. This was a bad sign. In his time on patrols through his small hometown, he had seen a lot of roadkill – always being viciously torn apart by some form of scavenging, opportunistic bird. He simply stared at in silence for a long while, utterly silent, gaze hardening – mind turning back to that poor husk of a human being, the horrifying but painfully sad shell of a woman that had been the first monster he had ever seen outside of his childhood nightmares. It had nearly reduced him to sobbing, the first time he had caught sight of her trapped beneath a bicycle, his stomach turning, mouth falling open at his horrified gasp, his arms jerkily twitching about as she moaned, the devoured remains of her hands weakly clawing out at him.

He shut his eyes at the thought. Without pause, he abruptly decided to just do what needed to be done, reminding himself that Lori and Carl were waiting for him – he hoped to god this were still so, his isolated mind tearing itself to shreds in their absence, his heart spewing awful, uncontainable fear and horror into the empty space they had left – and punched the door handle open, throwing it out for him to swiftly exit. At his sudden movement, the crows who had previously just looked wearily up at his car rumbling slowly down the road scattered, their loud, indignant squawks echoing through the vehicular graveyard Rick now made his way up through, empty canister and loaded gun in hand.

He spared a glance at the collapsed body once more, to see if it was about to reanimate as Morgan had grimly forewarned him of, stuttering up on rotting legs to attack anything within grabbing distance and adding any they could to their damned legion of faceless, aimless drones. Luckily, however, as he nudged it carefully with his tightly booted foot, gun firmly at the ready, it didn't move at all, seeming for all the world to be truly, positively, stone-cold dead. This relieving possibility was further evidenced by the conspicuous dent in the back of its head that he crouched warily downwards to study, a splatter of its dark bile covering the ground, its blood now so far past the point of congealing that it couldn't even pool out around it, instead caught in its various wounds and exposed areas of muscles, hardening stiffly in the concentrated, baking heat. Frowning slightly at the relative freshness of the wound – from what he could tell, anyway, in all its rotting decay – he wondered on who had dealt the final blow before straightening, gaze flickering about to ensure nothing was creeping up on him before he continued on.

The cluttered path through the centre of the mess had evidently been disturbed by many pairs of feet, reinforcing the notion of a large encampment, perhaps even larger than what cars had been abandoned there. It was likely that people had fled on foot in their desperation, leaving behind all material wealth and supplies in favour of survival. Maybe there had been an attack, and everybody had scattered – he was pondering on that notion when, passing by a car window, he caught sight of a decaying carcass, a bullet hole and splattering of dried blood accompanying it. Brow furrowing, he glanced around and found much the same elsewhere – the other cars intermittently housing a firmly housed corpse, their collective, rotting stench making him choke and pull a hand up to cover his face for a moment as he regained his composure. Eventually, slowly pulling the hand away, the realisation that he was never going to find another survivor here washed over him, and he steadily pushing away the niggling sorrow of that comprehension in favour of deciding to just grab the gas he needed and get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

This is mind, he pushed forward again, legs working harder, muscles growing tenser and finger tightening further on the trigger guard of his pistol. Nudging aside the detritus of the desperate haven of pseudo-civilisation the small gas station had once been, he steadfastly turned away from the corpses staring unseeingly at him with accusing eyes, the abandoned, bloody toys of long-past children hitching his breath as he finally neared the middle of the camp, head flicking up in grim relief to the gas pump.

He paused.

'_**ALL OUT OF GAS.**_'

His silence dragged on and on. His eyes never left the hasty, haphazard sign nailed shakily above the pump: eyes fixed, hard, disbelieving – before, quite abruptly, he turned, kicked a nearby friendly sign-post encouraging visitors to buy rinky-dink keychains and postcards, and let loose a gritted, pained grunt of fury, head turning reproachfully to the heavens. The empty canister in his hands suddenly felt so much heavier than it had been before, seeming to accuse him of something, pulling on his dirtied fingers and sweating his palm.

A faint, resolute thought at the back of his head that sounded vaguely like Shane encouraged him to throw it away, to just run to Atlanta on foot – but he quashed that stupid train of thought before it got far, recognising that he'd probably only get a few miles in before his supplies depleted and he succumbed to exhaustion. His grating tongue, drying swiftly in the heat and the stress of the last few minutes, jarred uncomfortably at the roof of his mouth, reminding him swiftly of his already present dehydration, another reminder from the part of his mind that was still maintaining some amount of sense in the face of this disastrous development – and a disaster it was, no doubt. He wouldn't have enough fuel left in the sorely depleted tank to ride out in search of another gas station that was probably miles off, and he knew that any nearby town would probably be overrun with the dead. There was simply nothing he could do.

His head turned back down, expression crumpling, features twisting. How the hell he would reach his family now was anyone's guess. He would die for them, he would do whatever it took to reach them – but he had no idea of what to do. It horrified him. The weight of this recognition slumped his shoulders, his posture slipping as he let loose a soft, hitched sigh, the gun in his hands twitching and nudging at him, niggling unwanted thoughts.

There was no way he was ever going to find them.

Abruptly, at that thought, a rock slammed into the back of his head.

Jolted forth with the sudden, powerful impact, he stumbled forward on his abruptly unsteadied legs, the gas canister falling with a loud clang as his hands flew up on instinct to the back of his twinging head, his scratchy throat gritting a pained grunt through his chapped lips, a curse escaping him. In the moment of utter shock he was so suddenly struck with, he was unable to process a proper thought – until, senses kicking back in, he brought up his pistol, whipped around with startling force and lined up his forcibly steady aim, mouth thinning into a determined line.

Before he even got to properly scan the eerily empty space before him, his twitching finger at the ready on his trigger at the bizarreness of it all, a quiet little tremble of a curse floating through the air above him flicked his head up, his gun shifting in aim. After a moment's pause, his brow rose, and he halted.

There, dangling clumsily off the roof of the gas station, a pile of sharp rocks in hand, stood a wide-eyed woman.

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_Well, there you go! Hope that was to your liking. If you enjoyed that, let me know - it brings a gigantic smile to my face when I see people are enjoying what I've written, and I'd like to see how much interest there is in this type of story :') If you want to see more of my TWD fanfics, check out my DarylxOC fic 'Something to Rely On', and my GlennxOC fic 'The World Changed, Not Us' (wow, I'm fairly going through the men, amn't I? Haha!)_

_Anyway, as always, wish you guys all the best - see you next time! :)  
_


	2. Chapter 2: Leaps and Bounds

_Hey guys! :D Sorry if this took a wee bit longer than expected - I've been very busy with uni lately -_- Anyway, thanks for the lovely responses last chapter, glad you all enjoyed it! :3 As usual, if you have a sec, please leave a review to tell me how you like the chapter - I've not got any experience in writing Rick, and would love the feedback :')_

_fabsch1 - Why, thank you! :D I'm quite surprised there aren't more, he's so lovely :') Haha, hope you get some enjoyment out of this, then! Enjoy! :)  
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_dalejrgurl008 - Thanks very much! :3 I agree, it's absolutely scandalous how little there is - sighhhhh :' Hope you enjoy the chapter, thanks again! C:  
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_XxrudexbutxnicexX - Oh, thanks so much! :'D Haha, whelp, here's the update - have fun! :)  
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_bluecrush611 - Yay, thanks very much! C: A fellow Rick lover, heehee :L Glad to see people liked it! Hope your enjoyment continues with this chap :3  
_

_**DISCLAIMER: Me no own-yyyy. ;A;**_

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Chapter 2 - Leaps and Bounds

The crows were back.

They hung back from the gas station now, nerves niggling on their full, plooming wings at the silent figures ahead, ready to take flight at the slightest threat. Their argumentative, obnoxious squawks filled the air as they returned to pick apart anything they could find that wasn't tainted with whatever it was that had made the dead walk, scrambling over each other for the best scraps. As one of them seized up a big chunk of some fly-covered, utterly rotten meat that had been crushed into the beaten tarmac with the hastened trampling of feet, another immediately snatched it into their own hooked, blood-splattered beak, initiating an abrupt, furious tussle. The sounds of their brawl echoed through the vehicular graveyard the gas station had slowly become, their screeches bouncing around the rusting metal carcasses filled with still, empty inhabitants.

The thoroughly shocked woman above had yet to move, not even blinking at the violent cacophony blaring around them, and Rick had yet to stop staring at her in his shock, his mouth hanging open slightly, his pistol hanging loosely in his grip, pointing off to the side as it slowly fell away. Their eyes locked, wide, their brows far up their temples, shooting into their hairlines, both utterly silent.

Then Rick finally blinked again, and suddenly recognised that she was still hanging haphazardly off the side of the roof with one hand, swaying slightly in the breeze, edging down bit by bit as the seconds crawled by. Without a thought, he twitched forward, arms flinging up, ready to catch her – however, at his sudden movement, the woman's eyes widened all the more, and her swaying limbs abruptly flew up to hook clumsily onto the roof again, the sharp rocks she had held scattering from her vaulting off palm and clattering loudly to the asphalt as she swiftly pulled herself up with a loud grunt of effort, her form disappearing from his view in the blink of an eye.

Brow rising sharply at her sudden exit, Rick hastily moved forward, a strong feeling in his gut telling him that it would be an awful mistake to allow the first human contact he'd had outside of Morgan and Duane since he had woken up be so quickly broken. Muffled, clanging thumps above on the roof filled the air, the light, distinctive clanking of tin cans following it, and he hastened all the more, his voice reaching out hurriedly, "Wait, Miss – I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to talk!" No response came, the clinks of tins continuing as she hurriedly packed her bags, preparing a swift exit, pushing him to quickly pull his trump card, "I'm a police officer, Ma'am!"

The clanking stopped. There was a long pause. Then, quite suddenly, the woman's head popped up over the side again, hair in a tangle over her face, her hands firmly clutching the top so as not to slip off. She stared at him in silence, eyes wary, her brow furrowed for so long that he began to vaguely wonder whether or not she was suffering from heat stroke, until her stunted, bemused question came forth, "Is that why you've got that hat?"

He paused. Then, faintly recognising the strangeness of the whole situation, his eyes warming a bit at her genuine curiosity, he replied slowly, calming slightly at seeing her remain where she was, watching him still, "Yes, Ma'am. It's part of the uniform."

Another silence. Then, some more of her form shifted back into view, edging slowly up for him to see, her eyes glancing away, her free hand fidgeting worriedly over itself as she gave an uncertain, "Uh." He quirked a brow as she paused, her cheeks abruptly flushing before she continued, words finally edging out, her voice suddenly quite timid, "I didn't hurt you there, did I?"

Rick blinked in confusion before the back of his head twinged with pain again, previously numbed by his shock. His hand twitched up to hold it for a moment, feeling a small cut from where the sharp rock had impacted with a loud crack – before he heard her give a soft, hitched breath and he snapped his hand quickly away again, sensing her guilt, giving her a firm smile, "Don't worry about it – you just surprised me, is all." He gave a reassuring, slightly more sombre nod at her uncertain gaze, "No harm done. I've taken a lot worse in my time." His thoughts lingered on his bullet wound then, the lurking pain of it reminding him of a rather fresh wound he had sustained that was far worse than the one she had dealt.

Her chapped lip quirked up slightly at that, a friendly sort of relief relaxing her expression as she slowly pushed her bag back behind her, letting it fall away with a muted clank as she gave him an embarrassed apology, her cheeks slowly returning to a calmer shade, "Well, I'm sorry all the same. I just woke up, and you gave me a bit of a fright – I thought maybe you were a really well dressed walker or something."

Smile warming, Rick replied, his affinity with other people stretching out and coming into its own, loosening his tightened muscles and relaxing his expression, "I'm sorry about that – I can imagine it wasn't the nicest of things to wake up to." Her mouth turned up a bit more at his reciprocated amicability as he continued, gesturing behind himself, the empty gas canister swaying in his grip, the weight of it suddenly pulling down on his arm and flicking his gaze back around to it, "I just came up here to get some gas – I've been driving over here on half a tank for hours."

Settling back, she flicked her eyes to his dust-smothered patrol car, gaze skimming over the still arguing crows, brow rising as she straightened, curiosity overtaking her thoughts, "Where'd you come from?"

"Kentucky." She turned to him, brow flying up at his abruptly tired nod, his exhausted muscles suddenly reminding him just how long he had been driving for, "Cynthiana in Kentucky."

She halted at that and whistled lowly to herself, barely audible to him as she leaned carefully forward, a hand subconsciously scraping a swaying strand of her hair away, her voice quirking up, impressed, "You've come a long way." She paused, her eyes meeting his, hesitant for a moment before she asked, deeply interested all of a sudden, "Where are you going – if you don't mind me asking?"

His face fell a bit at that, the lingering warmth of his gaze fading slightly, eyes hardening. She fidgeted at the change, and he glanced away for a moment before speaking again, voice gritted with a solemn edge, "I'm going to Atlanta." She tipped her head at that, bemused, and he continued, "I'm looking for someone."

"Oh?" She turned fully to him, her gaze focussing as she listened attentively.

He looked away for a moment, gaze darkening. At his pause, she tensed a bit, seeming to regret asking, her brow denting until, quite suddenly, he answered, voice low and sombre, his eyes flicking back up to meet her eyes steadily, "My wife and son."

"...Oh." Her face fell. A silence engulfed them at her soft mutter, her muscles tautening in discomfort, his legs shifting back, gaze unsure. He expected to find pity in her eyes, regarding him with an awful sort of sympathy that just edged his shoulders up all the more, making the vacancy of his family all the more painful. However, against his expectation, when he looked back up at her he could see that something else lay there, something far less aching – empathy. A sort of sad understanding and hitched respect that she communicated with a firm yet gentle gaze. It halted him. When she spoke again, he found himself unable to look away for a moment, struck as she softly told him, "I'm sorry."

There was a pause as he continued to look up at her, gaze held back. Eventually, taking a deep breath, a hand coming up to rub his shoulder, he looked away for a moment before his eyes flicked back up and he quietly reassured her, "Don't worry about it." He paused, his hands dropping by his side, his eyes warming a bit as he told her, "I'll find them." At his quiet yet assured affirmation, she smiled, her youthful eyes warming all the more. Leaning back on his haunches, giving a subconscious final scan of the area, Rick slowly put away his pistol, flicking the safety back on as it settled into its holster, ready to be pulled out at the slightest threat. Looking back up at her as she waited patiently for him, a hand absently tugging at her sock, he paused before asking her politely, "Would you mind me asking your name, Miss?" She looked somewhat surprised as he continued, "It seems like now would be a good time for introductions."

"Oh!" She gaped a him for a moment, hand stopping as it pulled away a stray thread from the wool of her garment before she nodded quickly, laughing embarrassedly at herself, "-Good idea!" She smiled, nodding again as she informed him warmly, kind gaze meeting his, "I'm Cara. Cara Goodman." She paused, "Pretty boring."

Shaking his head, Rick assured her, a friendly smile spreading across his face, "I think it's real nice." He looked back up, a kind smile and a genial nod coming with a soft tap of his hat towards her, "I'm Rick Grimes. It's nice to meet you, Cara."

Struck for a moment, her grin widened to a cheerful size, her gaze brightening abruptly as she enthusiastically replied, "Likewise!"

Smiling at her reply, Rick straightened, his hand moving away from his hat. She was now comfortably settled atop the roof, looking quite stable and not at all affected by the clumsiness she had seemed struck with earlier. Her muscles were firm and calmly settled back as she looked down at him, squinting slightly as a burst of sunlight passed from the branches of a nearby tree and blazed over her temple, shifting her about slightly, catching his eye on her reasonable muscles as she brought a hand up to shield her gaze. Her hands looked somewhat strong and broken in, emanating an air of stable confidence, providing firm steadiness when it mattered most. All in all, she looked far more capable that at his first glance, when she had been dangling so haphazardly off of the roof, expression exactly imitating that of a deer faced with an impending 8-wheeler.

This in mind, Rick flicked his head up at her and asked her curiously, "What are you doing out here?"

Again, she looked somewhat surprised at the conversation turning to her, and took a pause before asking her own question, "Why?"

He shrugged his strong muscles, his gun holster jingling about quietly as he answered reassuringly, "Just wondering what a young woman is doing out in a place like this all by herself."

"Well, I'm here in the gas station because the smell of those things drives others away," he straightened, his brow rising, and she nodded at him, "Yeah, it's strange. Guess they know that it means nothing's alive about there for them to eat." Pausing for a moment, she shifted again in her seat, her hand finally coming back down as the offending glint of sunlight passed over to her left, allowing her to settle back with a continuation, "As for what I'm doing..." A silence. Then, quietly, she finished, "Nothing." She shook her head, "Nothing at all."

Following her unexpected response and her reciprocating friendly nod, there was another pause. He looked up at her, gaze deepening, brow furrowing, mouth falling to an even line as he patiently waited for her to talk. The silence continued for another moment or so, disturbed by neither of them – before, quite abruptly and without any warning whatsoever, she leaned back and disappeared from his sight again. Before he had a chance to hastily ask her if she was leaving, brow denting at her quick exit, she swiftly appeared again, her rucksack flung over her back, and, without pomp or ceremony, she leapt off the roof.

Lurching forward, the gas can falling to the ground with a loud clang as his arms flew up at her abrupt descent, he jolted to her side – but arrived a bit late. By the time he halted in front of her, arms falling back down, she was brushing off dust from her front and heaving her bag further up her shoulders, zipping up her jacket and removing a flashy looking baseball bat from her back, smiling cheerfully at him. At his wordless rising of a brow, his lips going lopsided in what was half a frown and half an impressed grin, she stepped forward past him, swiftly lifted the abandoned gas can, and called back behind her with a merry, "You coming or not?"

His brow rose all the more as her question echoed around them and sent the bothersome crows scattering away again, her legs hopping over one another as she stretched them out, cricking her neck as he asked her, quite struck, "Where to?"

"To get gas, of course." She stood up, turned, and smiled resolutely at him, a steady nod coming with her firm declaration, "I've decided I'm coming with you."

Rick halted, his shoulders straightening, posture struck. And then, slowly, the half frown faded to make way for a full on grin, his gaze warm as a surprised, disbelieving laugh came forth.

Well, he supposed.

That was that.

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_Soooooo...what did you think? Did you like Cara? If you've read my other TWD stories, you'll notice she's a lot more free than Jeanie - she's not suffered quite as much. Hope you like that, it's nice change to have someone who's a bit more open to write about. :)_

_Whelp, hope you all enjoyed that! As usual, leave a review if you have the time (I eat 'em up like cookies...YUMMM :'D)! See you all later! C:  
_


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